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Entering Opening Balances

Unless you are starting a new business and intend to use Standard ERP to administer your accounts from the first day, you will need to enter some opening balances. If you are starting to use Standard ERP at the beginning of the fiscal year, these opening balances will take the form of the closing balances for each Account for the end of the previous year. If you are starting to use Standard ERP in the middle of the fiscal year, there will be two components to opening balance figures: the closing balances for each Account for the end of the previous year and Account balances for the current year to date.

To carry out this task, you should equip yourself with as much information as you can in the form of transaction data and reports produced by the old system, in order to make this task as easy as possible.

We recommend that you change during a current financial year. You should enter Account balances for the previous year and then enter individually all current year transactions registered so far. This will a) make you familiar with Standard ERP, and b) automatically give you a check of the old transactions.

You should already have specified the current and, if appropriate, previous financial years using the Fiscal Years setting and entered the Chart of Accounts and VAT Codes you wish to use. A template Chart of Accounts that you can use or adapt is supplied with Standard ERP. If this is not suitable, you can import your own chart from a text file or enter it manually. For more instructions about this process, please refer to the Importing Set-up Data page.

If you will be using Currencies, you should also enter the Currencies used in your business together with Exchange Rates. If any Accounts will have Currency balances, enter the appropriate Currency in the relevant Account records. You should specify in the Base Currency setting in the System module that your local Currency is to be used as Base Currency 1 and the Default Base Currency and, if you are using the Dual-Base currency conversion system you should also specify in the same setting the Currency that is to be used as Base Currency 2. The Dual-Base system will be useful for companies that have offices in two countries that need to report in both Currencies, for companies operating in countries where there is a second Currency (usually the US Dollar or Euro) in common use in addition to the national one, and for companies in the Euro zone who retain their old national Currency for comparison purposes.

If you will not be using Currencies, it is still a good idea (and a recommended course of action) to enter one record in the Currency register to represent your local Currency, and to specify in the Base Currency setting in the System module that this is your Base Currency 1 and Default Base Currency. This will make it easier to start using Currencies in the future if you need to do so while having absolutely no impact on your work before that time comes.

Once you have entered your Fiscal Year, Chart of Accounts, VAT Codes and Currencies it's a good idea to enter all the opening balances at once. Ideally, this process should be completed before you start to enter new Transactions but it is possible to change the opening balances at any time during the financial year.

When entering opening balances, the level of detail is up to you. Factors influencing this decision may be the number of Transactions, the time available to enter these Transactions, whether you can import them (otherwise, you will have to enter them manually) and the level of detail required in your reports. It might be that you enter or import all Transactions individually (in the form of Invoices, Receipts, Purchase Invoices, Payments and Nominal Ledger Transactions) or it might be that you enter a single opening balance for each Account. Full details covering the necessary data entry processes follow in the next sections.

Once you have entered your opening balances in their chosen form, print the reports you usually use and compare them with the reports from your old system. These reports should include the Trial Balance, Profit & Loss and Balance Sheet from the Nominal Ledger, and lists of Debtors and Creditors using the Sales and Purchase Ledger reports respectively.

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